Nudge of the Week: Mitigate bad news with good news

When you give people good news in spite of bad news, this lessens the impact of the bad news.

One example from Rory Sutherland: when a plane doesn’t pull up to the gate, this is generally considered to be bad news because you now have to take a bus, and who wants to sit in a bus after hours of being in a train?

Back to Sutherland’s story: a plane he was riding stopped of the gate. Instead of simply directing people to get on the bus, the pilot added new information: that the bus will take the passengers directly to passport control, so that now they don’t have to walk all that way while carrying their luggage.

But it’s always been true that the bus takes you to passport control directly. The pilot simply reminded the passengers of the story, and this way of framing the situation really helped the passengers feel better.